6/13/05
I write to you tonight by the orange light of a distant streetlamp somewhere off in Park Slope, Brooklyn: the power is completely out in our apartment. At some point this evening, the air conditioners destroyed a circuit deep in the bowels of our brownstone, meaning there are at least three feet of 1885 brick between us and a solution.
This comes at the heels of perhaps Lucy's fussiest night in recent memory; she usually takes three naps during the day (lasting 1-2 hours each) but today she napped for 50 minutes TOTAL. By 7pm, she was listing to one side, drunk with fatigue, but still had enough power in her mitochondria to blast an ear-shedding series of screams that would sand varnish off a flight of stairs.
I have about 20 minutes of battery life left in my Powerbook, and I'm stealing wifi from someone named "lemur" within 100 feet of my predicament, and I'm praying it doesn't get so stiflingly hot that Lucy is forced to wake up and share her Yoko Ono-influenced pop stylings with us.
It is nights like this, in the city, that you come face to face with the fragility of your situation. Up at the farm, we have solar power and a battery backup (so this wouldn't happen), but you also sense the infinite possibility of firewood, plants, animals and sustenance.
The city, however, gets very cruel very fast in times of need. The electrical outage of 2003 was hailed as a sort of Burning Man for New York City, but if it had lasted longer, things would have gotten ugly.
I can only pray that this outage will be short-lived, and Tessa and I don't turn on each other in a cannibalistic frenzy. Ahoy!
Posted by Ian Williams at June 13, 2005 9:23 PMEverybody's always blaming Yoko!
This brings back memories of last August when we were without power for 5+ days courtesy of Jeanne, Charley or one of their friends.
August. Florida. Post-mega rainstorm. Think about it.
I hope you have power soon!
air conditioning in the summer is a fundamental right. (it says so somewhere in the constitution) we lost our power for several days thanks to one of those hurricanes and after awhile i started to understand serial killers. go to a hotel and crank up the air.